Kembel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Middle High German kembel ‘camel’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkɛmbəɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kembel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 421K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 1.1M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 15 (measured from records)
- 1 in 421K (inferred from the name graph)
298 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Middle High German kembel ‘camel’. The surname arose from the name of a house or inn zum kembel ‘at the (sign of the) camel’. Zum Kdmbel is still found as an inn name in Zurich.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kembel counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 298 | 1 in 1.1M | 302 | Kembel | 15 |
| NL Netherlands | 41 | 1 in 421K | 41 | Kembel | 5 |
| DO Dominican Republic | — | — | — | Kembel | 1 |
| AR Argentina | — | — | — | Kembel | 10 |
| CA Canada | — | — | — | Kembel | 3 |
298 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Steven W. KembelCAresearcher
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 10 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 302 | #69,958 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 298 | #66,371 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 287 | #64,750 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 41 | #34,798 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Kembel come from?
- from Middle High German kembel ‘camel’. The surname arose from the name of a house or inn zum kembel ‘at the (sign of the) camel’. Zum Kdmbel is still found as an inn name in Zurich. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kembel?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɛmbəɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Kembel mean?
- Recorded meaning: from Middle High German kembel ‘camel’.
- In which country does Kembel have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 298 people named Kembel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kembel.
- Where is Kembel most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kembel is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 421 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Kembel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 298 people named Kembel in 2010, about 1 in 1.1 million residents.
What do you want to know about Kembel?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kembelThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Kembel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.